I Live in a Frying Panhttp://www.iliveinafryingpan.com
...sizzling up hole-in-the-wall ethnic eats of old DubaiSat, 21 Mar 2015 06:00:30 +0000en-UShourly1A Trail of Crumbs: Diving into Traditional Bread Baskets across Dubaihttp://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/traditional-breads-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/traditional-breads-dubai/#commentsSat, 21 Mar 2015 06:00:30 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8505Be it the pillowy pita or the raggedy injera, breaking bread across the many ethnic communities in Dubai is an incredible way of experiencing its melting pot – or heart-warming oven – of cultures. At this junction of the Middle East, Africa … Continue reading →]]>

Be it the pillowy pita or the raggedy injera, breaking bread across the many ethnic communities in Dubai is an incredible way of experiencing its melting pot – or heart-warming oven – of cultures. At this junction of the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent, you can find breads that have sandwiched together stories, families and dinner traditions across generations. Here’s a trail through some of the breads that I think would make any hummus, daal or kabab feel special. They’re not all strictly made in an oven, a few in the list are smeared atop a griddle or sizzled in a pan. But no matter the method, these savoury crumbs enjoyed across the cultural pockets of Dubai’s vibrant society are worth your nibble.

This Iranian bread is made of a gloopy leavened mixture of whole wheat and white flour dough, and ingeniously spread over washed and heated pebbles. Hence it’s been christened Sangak, or ‘little stones.’ The baker perforates the length of the bread with his fingers, which prevents it from rising into a chunky inedible slab. The sangak ovens at Abshar (both their Maktoum and Jumeirah branches) and Pars (their Satwa branch) are recommended if you’re the inquisitive kind who likes to step close and stick your head into the oven. My preference is to have sangak slightly under-baked, so that its stone-crisped skin can unveil moist, tender dough pockets within. I’d recommend a DIY Sangak Sammy with a generous smear of salty feta, crushed pre-soaked walnuts and reyhaan (an aromatic type of basil). Or wrapped around a fat-dripping minced lamb kabab. Or dipped into honey comb and fresh cream. Or eaten with the Gods in the garden of Eden.

LEBANESE MANOUSHE (sing.)

This is not technically a bread but closer to a pizza – but then, one could argue that a pizza is technically bread that’s pre-paired with ingredients. However you chose to interpret it, your life in Dubai simply cannot be complete without copious quantities of za’atar and cheese mana’eesh (pl.) This Lebanese pizza is typically sauceless, with the olive oil serving as the glue for the surface ingredients like herbs and meat (first photo above from Al Mukhtar Bakery). I typically cave in to one, maybe two orders per week, all from a Lebanese chain called Breakfast to Breakfast (BtoB) that serves a thin-stretched, less doughy version (manoushe ‘light’) upon request. And once every few months, I surrender to the grease-dripping power of their cheese and spiced sausage (sujuk) manoushe (second photo above), best enjoyed fresh in the café rather than delivered home. Old timers also swear by the mana’eesh from the classic 2am post-party pit stop, Al Reef bakery, or at Al Mukhtar on Ittihad road (technically in Sharjah) – but when you’ve had the lighter and more flavourful version at BtoB, you’ll find your loyalty lasts no longer than the piping hot manoushe on the plate.

TANDOORI ROTI OR KHUBZ TANOOR

Hoards of bachelors depend on communal roti ovens, usually manned by about two to three skilled Pakistani or Afghani men who roll out the white flour dough, dexterously flip it between their palms till it stretches to a perfect circle, sling it over a cloth cushion and smack it against the sides of a cylindrical, vertically-oriented tandoori oven. Once the roti bubbles up to a crisp, it’s extracted out of the hot burrow with two metal sticks and bagged up for the bargain price of AED 1.00 per roti. These bakers usually bake both a leavened or an unleavened pockmarked roti, and I dare you to not pluck at it before you’ve recruited a suitable curry accomplice. You can spot these ovens across all neighbourhoods where the blue-collar working man resides – be it the alleys of Satwa, Naif (Deira), Hor Al Anz (Deira) and Meena Bazaar (Bur Dubai). Incidentally, this tandoor also makes an appearance in Iraqi and Iranian restaurants, not surprising given that the Middle East (specifically Mesopotamia) was the original birthplace of the ”tanoor” (Arabic) or ”tinuru” (Semitic) oven thousands of years ago.

MORE ROTI FROM THE MASONRY OVENS

Another common type of roti oven, often fired up in the same areas where the Tandoori ovens work, is the pizza-style or masonry oven. I’ve heard bakers call the oven ”baachi” once in Naif, though they reckon that’s a local name rather than one used back home in Afghanistan/Indian/Pakistan. The dough is typically unleavened and I find that roti emerging from these ovens usually remains tender for longer than that out of a tandoor. On my sister’s Little India food trail, she uses the roti as a piping hot canvas over which she smears clarified butter (ghee) and jaggery before rolling it up into a sweet buttery mid-meal snack. Hot, fresh, tender, bubbly, butter-dripping, sugar-laden bread…and you’re telling me room-temperature cupcakes are a thing? Puh-lease.

PARATHA AND PAROTTA

Paratha is that form of shallow-fried bread that makes curries happy across the Indian subcontinent. ‘Paratha’ is the North Indian term for the layered whole wheat flour bread, while ‘Parotta’ refers to its more elastic, fluffy and fair-faced South Indian style cousin (pictured above). Meena Bazaar abounds in shops that serve Paratha for breakfast, ideally paired with lentils, yoghurt and/or chillies fried in mustard oil. This North Indian variant can also be stuffed with everything from potatoes to sprouts, with places like Paratha King offering over a hundred mind-boggling stuffed choices for the chronically indecisive. The always un-stuffed South Indian parotta version is usually found in Keralite cafeterias, where they hand out parotta and omelette rolls for exponentially less than the price of water in most high-end restaurants. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you where I’d invest my money.

SPECIALTY NORTH INDIAN BREADS

Most North Indian restaurants worth their salt – like the Mughali-style Sigdi for instance – will have a selection of at least six breads on their menu if not more. If you trawl through North Indian bread baskets across the city, you will find everything from the flat makki ki roti (maize flour) to the deep-fried puffy puri, which is best deflated over a bowl of curried chana (chickpeas). Worth trying is Ballimaran Dilli‘s Lucknowi sheermal, a chewy amber-coloured flatbread whose milky sweetness amplifies the primal flavour of its molten Gulawati Kababs. (first picture above). I’ve also always had a soft spot for the potato-stuffed kulcha (second picture above) from Kulcha King, a franchise that has grown from a small hole in Bur Dubai into an empire with bulletin boards across Sheikh Zayed Road. Their Punjabi (specifically Amritsari) kulchas are stuffed with a soft mushy layer of potatoes, laced with onions, or injected with cheese if you so desire, and sprinkled with a fine powdery film of tangy chaat masala. Topped with a hunky knob of butter and served alongside chole and a sweet-spicy onion and chilli chutney, this is easily one of the most addictive breads that emerges out of Dubai’s North Indian kitchens.

SOUTH INDIAN APPAMS, DOSAS AND THEIR WHOLE FERMENTED FAMILY

In all the gluten-blasting rhetoric we’ve heard over the past three decades, my only thought (other than, sure, go gluten-free, more bread for me*.) has been, why on earth aren’t we giving some bread cred to the South Indians? Their fermented rice flour and white urad dal concoctions are what gluten-free dreams are made of – and those dreams are realized every day at dirt cheap prices in Dubai. Calicut Paragon’s bowl-shaped appams (pictured above) do an instant disappearing act every time they hit a table – best paired with crab or fish curry. Dosas from Woodlands, Aryaas or Sangeeta are tried and tested by those-in-the-know. And then there are the uttappams and idlis that any South Indian restaurant in Karama that’s worth its sambar will have on its menu. If you don’t know what these strange exotic words mean, please hail a cab and visit Karama. IMMEDIATELY.

**My frivolous gluten-free comment is not aimed at anyone with celiac disease or medically proven gluten-free intolerance/allergy. It’s more for these kinds of people.

EMIRATI REGAG

Regag is closer to a cracker or crepe than what we typically consider a bread. But similar to bread, it requires a great deal of dexterity in making it. A heavily hydrated ball of unleavened dough is slapped against a griddle and fanned out into a thin film which cooks until crispy. It can be eaten plain or amped up with mahyahwah (anchovy sauce), eggs, cheese or honey. The key to a successful regag is in the texture – the crispier the better. One of my personal favourites is at Labeeb Grocery in Jumeirah, though I’ve also enjoyed a stellar version at the Global Village in past years. This bread can also be crumbled up and added into a meat or chicken stew, making a dish called Thareed that was the favourite of the Prophet Muhammad, thereby making it a revered specialty of the Gulf and broader Middle East region.

MOROCCAN KHUBZ

No Moroccan meal can be complete without plump, crusty loaves of khubz. The best ones have a crisp semolina-dusted shell with soft cottony chambers that are perfect for making love to a slow-cooked tagine. You can grab a fresh-baked round of bread at either Marakesh Bakery or Aghroum Bakery in the less-known Abu Hail neighbourhood. Even if you couldn’t find the right tagine (I am guarding my favourite place with my life – the last two places I wrote about on my blog shut down, so I won’t jinx the third), I find it hard to believe that a home-made lamb stew wouldn’t make a lone khubz feel whole.

Another bread to try at Aghroum Bakery is the Msemen, similar to the North Indian paratha and often stuffed with meat or onions. I’ve yet to find someone who has not incessantly snacked on it whenever it made an appearance. And if I do find that someone, well then, there’s more for me.

ETHIOPIAN INJERA

I once had a guest on one of my food trails mistake the injera at an Ethiopian restaurant for a hand-wiping rag. I couldn’t blame her, the grayish mottled appearance of Injera doesn’t inspire you to leap forth and ravenously tear it off for a taste. But once you’re past its alien appearance, you might begin to appreciate this intriguingly sour scooping tool for your spicy Ethiopian stews. Injera is made with a grain called teff, a super healthy grain that didn’t naturally grow in the rest of the world until the Americans fell in love with it and decided to cultivate it closer to home. The Ethiopians spread this fermented bread like a cloth across the serving plate or mesob and ladle their stews, lentils and vegetables directly over it. This allows the juicy berbere sauce and other gravies to soak irresistibly into the bread, and before you know it, that hand-wiping rag has become the inseparable lining of your tummy. Sara makes two kinds of injera at her extremely popular Habasha restaurants – a regular pale one and a brown one that she claims is healthier.

EGYPTIAN FETEER

The theatrics involved in making Egyptian feteer are only surpassed by the taste of the fresh buttery layers of bread itself. White flour, water and butter are combined to make a stretchy, slippery dough that is flipped in the air till it is stretched out as thin as phyllo. Multiple feteers can be layered one inside the other to make the famed ‘feteer mshaltet’ which goes well with honey, cream or if you want to live dangerously, both. While Al Ammor is the feteer stalwart, I also adore Soarikh’s savoury feteer filled with veggies, basturma (salty dried beef) and two kinds of cheese – a cow’s milk mozzarella and a goat’s milk Turkish cheese. You can go wild with the savoury and sweet variations, with the custard-filled or cheese-honey versions being the perfect remedy for post-sandstorm melancholy.

TURKISH PIDE

It has admittedly been eons since I’ve visited a Turkish restaurant so this may be the worst written paragraph in the rich history of Turkish breads. But once upon a time, I did stumble across a “fresh bouncy pide dotted with sesame seeds” at Yildiz Saray and “baked Turkish naan matted with white sesame and black nigella seeds” at Bosporus (first picture above) – but these distant memories need some serious rechecking to see if the quality of the food still holds up to my prehistoric reviews. I’ve recently read some mixed reviews online for both places, especially around shoddy service standards, so Í’m not suggesting you run out this very second to lure a pide into your tummy. I vaguely remember enjoying the bread at Zurna as well as the one at the newish Mavlana in Deira. And the second seedless pide pictured above is from a restaurant called Kervan Saray that is situated somewhere in Qusais and serves reasonably priced, very forgettable Turkish fare.

And that’s that. Thank you for wading through the worst paragraph written in Turkish bread history.

FILIPINO PANDESAL

The Filipino community hides some of the least celebrated but most soulful Portugese-influenced baking traditions in Dubai. The grocery stores in Filipino-dominated neighbourhoods like Murraggabat usually stock sweet cushiony rolls of Pandesal that are just crying to be dipped into well-seasoned runny egg yolk, alternated with sips of milky cardamom tea, or swiped across a bowl with any sort of gravy that needs mopping up. Honestly, it’s not hard to find a cross-cultural match for these irresistible milky buns, though their submissively soft texture makes them easy to enjoy in isolation as well.

This trail of crumbs is far from complete. I feel somewhat guilty for ending this post, knowing full well that there are a number of other traditional breads out there that I’ve overlooked or not even tasted. Fill in the gaps…what are your favourite breads in the city?

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/traditional-breads-dubai/feed/5A Trail of Four Markets – a Friday market hop across Old and New Dubaihttp://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/dubai-market-hop-trail/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/dubai-market-hop-trail/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 05:29:25 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8440The Friday brunch experience to try in 2015 is not the one in a sterile overpriced hotel, but rather the buffet of sensory market experiences that both old and new Dubai have to offer. Save your dirhams and spend a fruitful Friday completing … Continue reading →]]>

The Friday brunch experience to try in 2015 is not the one in a sterile overpriced hotel, but rather the buffet of sensory market experiences that both old and new Dubai have to offer. Save your dirhams and spend a fruitful Friday completing this trail of four markets in the City of Gold.

The Deira Fish and Vegetable Market

Connect with the region’s rich fishing heritage and chug coconut water for a fourth of the price in New Dubai.

Suggested Time: 6:00AM to 9:00AM (the market runs all the way till 1:30PM but the early birds always get the freshest catch). Unlike the rest of the markets in this post, this market is open every day of the week, mornings and evenings.

The Lowdown: Parking is NOT free on Fridays; much of the market holds imports of fish, fruits and veggies – but if you know what’s in season, you’ll know how to look for the local fish; the freshest catch is at the far end of the market; buy sustainably using www.choosewisely.ae; ditch the overfished hammour (orange-spotted grouper) and buy eshkeli (pink ear emperor) instead, which is excellent deep-fried in gram flour batter at the Grill & Shark Restaurant that I’ve described in an earlier post; rehydrate yourself in the veggies section with the cheapest coconut water you will find in Dubai (AED 4 to 5/coconut in the fruit/veggie section of the market (pictured below) as opposed to 15+ on the new side of town); crisp apple-green jujube are in season at the time of writing this post and are being sold right by the coconut water stand at the back of the market – AED 5 will grab you a nice bagful to crunch on for pre-breakfast munchies; ladies, please dress conservatively,unless you enjoy bare nuggets of you being stared at lecherously.

Want a friendly guide to reveal insider info on the market? Join the #unseenDXB photography course with Gulf Photo Plus, a project that I have co-designed. The expert photo instructor lays bare all my secrets about the market, including a super early morning visit for the frenzied wholesale fish auction, my favourite fishmonger’s stall, a visit to the shore to watch my fishmonger’s boats unloading, and loads of great info on how to capture the movement and atmospheric natural lighting in the market with anything from a phone camera to a DSLR.

If photography is not your thing, join meon my morning trail which includes the fish market and a bunch of other Old Dubai food-loving experiences. All photos of the market in this post and at the next one (RIPE) were taken on the #unseenDXB photo trail with Gulf Photo Plus (first launch trail on Friday, Feb 6, 2015).

There,shameless plug over.

The Ripe Food & Craft Market at Zabeel Park

Instagram profusely at this trending New Dubai market and rave about something. Anything. #goodLife #sexySelfie #glutenfreenutsfreedairyfreeBUTcheatwitharedvelvetcupcakeday

Suggested Time: 9:00AM to 10:00AM (the market runs till 5:00PM but the crowd swells a tad bit too much after 10:30AM for my peaceful Friday liking)

The Lowdown: Get there early else parking is a nightmare; AED 5.00 to enter the park; unbeatable fun outdoorsy vibe and a wide selection of prepared foods and handcrafted products; even though a market like this one might seem a bit affected after you’ve just left the grizzly fish market, keep an open mind to soaking up the outdoor fair-like atmosphere; there’s a lot of hype around certain stalls in the market, but remember that long lines for food don’t always correlate with taste/value for money on the new side of town; support the friendliest roti-gangsta on the planet – Tahir Shah – and his homegrown brand Moti Roti by buying a wrap with home-style Pakistani stuffings snuggled into a freshly-puffed whole wheat roti + lassi; the Prime Rib rosemary lamb sausage or beef burger might be the best AED 15.00 deal in the market, and they throw in water for free; hats off to all the vendors and their assistants who put in a boatload of effort serving the crowds all day; ladies, dress to impress (…on Instagram).

The Lowdown:Stalk their Facebook page for updates; this is the only farmer’s market in Dubai – people use that term too broadly here, but a farmer’s market is where you can actually meet the farmers who grow your produce and this is the only market in Dubai where you can do that; sells mostly produce + Balqees raw honey (which I unabashedly support) + RAW coffee + Baker & Spice’s grilled breakfast and baked goods + some other prepared foods; no cupcakes sighted thankfully; small market, but focus on quality of produce rather than quantity; go with the belief that if strawberries are not in season, then they don’t need to be at the market; buy what’s in season locally and celebrate ingredients in thoughtful home-cooked dishes; lack of selfie obsessives here – patrons simply care about their food, less about others watching them care about food; engage in friendly, informative banter with Laura Allais-Mare, the queen of the Slow Food Dubai chapter who’s got a stand right by the entrance of the market; grab spinach and runny eggs pinned between tender halves of an English muffin from Baker & Spice and find a grassy patch to kick off your flip-flops and tuck in; while not really local, the olives at the Astraea stand are really worth a taste. Let Kostas (photo below) infect you with his passion and knowledge of his family farm on the island of Samothrace in Greece – and if you buy a jar of precious fruity marinated olives, don’t be an elephant and forget them at the market like I did.

The Lowdown, part 2: To really appreciate this farmer’s market, you have to visit a local farm and understand the challenges of farming in the desert. Contact Slow Food Dubai to get on their mailing list and learn about farm visits. Organic Oasis comes recommended by my Fooderati Arabia friends and you can connect with them over Facebook to find out more details about scheduling a visit. Greenheart Organic Farms (which doesn’t sell at this market) also conducts informative farm visits that I’ve described in an earlier post. Educate yourself by learning from the masters – Sally Prosser, an award-winning blogger at My Custard Pie who frequently inspires her readers by sharing ‘’veggie art’’ on Facebook after her trips to the market and of course Laura, the leader of Slow Food Dubai. Both of them are usually flitting about the market, but even if you don’t run into them, I’ve got them to tell you why they love this market and why you should too:

Take a trail break with a much-deserved afternoon nap, unwind over tea and cookies bagged at the Farmer’s Market on the Terrace and then head over to the final, most hidden market of the trail…

Abu Hail Friday Night Bazaar

Get a real Taste of Dubai at a bustling night market that serves up specialties cooked in the homes of Emiratis, Indians, Pakistanis and Filipinos.

The Lowdown: This real taste of Dubai has no entry ticket and descends every Friday into the parking lot of the Union Coop in Abu Hail (Rashid Road); stalls are owned by Emiratis, some of whom sell food (e.g. harees, margooga) cooked in their homes and some of whom have leased their stalls to Indian/Pakistani/Filipino families who sell their own national foods; queues in Old Dubai usually correlate less with hype and more with flavour, so follow the crowds in this market; the food section is only one small edge of the market, much of it is dedicated to clothes and other knick knacks; dress conservatively – don’t land up in sleeveless shirts, shorts or anything body-baring; don’t leave without the lemony, immaculately charred chicken kababs (AED 25.00, including bread and chutney) in the last portacabin-like stall at the far end of the market – there’s always smoke billowing out of it and the Emirati man (Ali) who grills the kababs often sings (in Urdu) to passer-by’s (blow-by-blow photo account for your viewing pleasure below);

The Lowdown (cont’d): …deep-frying is the trend here; hot-sellers are nose-tingling whole chillies or onion shreds or potato slabs dipped in spiced gram flour batter and deep-fried to a grease-laden crisp; acceptably crispy luqeimat vendors are challenging to find at this market, the ones I’ve tried are anti-climactically doughy; mediocre karak chai options; be ready to stand your ground and claim your rightful batch of freshly fried goods – in markets such as this, queues are often not defined by straight lines between two points and forceful aunties get first dibs; while there are many families around, don’t go as a single woman or even a pair of women – my outrageously attractive friend (she’s taken boys) managed to garner some unwanted, nauseating attention from pre-puberty school boys; the Union Co-Op customer service is on hand for distressed damsels and can help to nip adolescent adrenaline in its bud; take your own napkins and Purell; don’t photograph local or veiled ladies or you might end up eating your pakodas at the police station.

If you manage to weave through all four markets in one day, I want to hear from you, you little market monster you.

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/dubai-market-hop-trail/feed/11When sorrow over Safa Park strikes, distract yourself with this food trail.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/when-sorrow-over-safa-park-strikes-distract-yourself-with-this-food-trail/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/when-sorrow-over-safa-park-strikes-distract-yourself-with-this-food-trail/#commentsSun, 11 Jan 2015 07:07:38 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8404After being in the food tour business for two years, I don’t know what on earth I’ve been doing writing about one-off restaurant experiences in backstreet here, or hidden alley there. I eat, live, breathe food trails every day of … Continue reading →]]>

After being in the food tour business for two years, I don’t know what on earth I’ve been doing writing about one-off restaurant experiences in backstreet here, or hidden alley there. I eat, live, breathe food trails every day of every gluttonous week – and this blog needs to reflect that. So from now, I will switch my old frying pan out for a more exciting one that sautés cherry-picked eateries into a mélange of gastronomic tummy-titillating experiences to keep you foodgasming for hours on end.

[Realistically, I’m just going to smack together a few eclectic joints that no one in their right minds would eat at all in the same day. But Right and Deliriously Belt-Popping Happy are two very different things.]

So without further ado, this blog is to now become the blank canvas upon which I will embed scrawlings of fledgling trails – aspiring food trails that may grow up to be best-selling experiences someday, saviour food trails that you might embark upon when one flimsy meal won’t cut through the craving, unborn food trails that may…well, rot like chickenshit in the cluttered closet of this blog. But whether you follow the trails or not, you are now eye witness to how my evil kadeevil constantly-munching mind works and we’re all in this together, whether a trail lives till our grandchildren embark upon the same edible journeys, or whether the trail dies a silent, unrecognized death on some SEO-failed URL in forgotten cyberspace. We are in this TOGETHER.

[Oh, and happy new year.]

Trail Name:[Sobbing over] Supping about Safa Park.

Trail Distance: 8.17 kilometres for the long-stretch option and 3.66 kilometres for the brisk trail.

Trail Rationale: We, the people who have grown up loving Safa Park, are heartbroken to see the greenery being razed down to make way for a smooth, shiny man-made canal with visions of Venice. Let us seek solace in our food discoveries and in the simple back alleys of the area. When you next drive by the balding Safa Park and have the overwhelming urge to bury your face in a fat overpriced cheeseburger, try this trail instead and eat your way out of the misery.

Adventure Level: None whatsoever, though you can be a daredevil and try to complete all 8.17 kilometres of the long-stretch trail option on foot. At 3.66 kilometres, the brisk trail option is a breeze. If you plan to walk, aim to start at about 5pm when the weather is cool (end-October to mid-April) and cancel any dinner plans for the evening. Obviously.

Control restaurant is about 5 km away from Safa Park, all the better because it’s depressing to begin any noble eating mission right by the construction wasteland that once called itself our childhood park. Another great reason to include it as a starting point is because it serves Iranian kababs, and that alone makes our food mission almost…historical.

The Iranians have a long history in the country and in addition to providing some of the foundational trading blocks of Dubai back in the early 1900’s, they also set the standard for a superior kabab. Dry, rubbery, overcooked nubs of meat are simply not acceptable. Control Restaurant is one of the many Iranian kabab eateries that can help you define your standards. It is a the branch of the same mind-blowing 28-year old kabab haunt in Tuar that I’d written about last year. While I was a total douchebag and didn’t release the Tuar location on the previous post, I’m going to be exceptionally generous with the coordinates for this location in Jumeirah (see google map link below).

Even though Control Restaurant is much newer (1.5 years old) and has not inherited the al fresco park ambiance of its parent location in Tuar, it does the same incredible marinated kababs. The long and short of what you should order is this: if you’re a chicken lover, their boneless chicken tikka (orange in colour on the menu) is undoubtedly the winner. If you love lamb, the majority vote in the past has gone to the chunks of lamb lemon tikka, and a small minority (aka me) loves the minced log called koobideh, even though my opponents have accused it of tasting too strong or eggy in the past.

Warning: They don’t speak English here, it’s mainly Arabic and maybe some Urdu. Make sure to use the google map (below) to find the location. Menu pointing will help immensely when you order.

For the purpose of the trail, it is best to stay away from rice (even though the pilaf with sweet-tart zereshk berries and butter is enough to make you ditch the trail and just eat your entire meal right here) and just get one, maybe two skewers on a piece of bread along with a digestive bottle of super salty doogh. And nothing more. Just eat, lick the skewer, take a selfie with an empty plate tagging #iphone6 #instafood #goodlife #kababBaller, and drive/trudge 5 kilometers up to the next stop.

Walking/Driving route: Try to walk/drive down Jumeirah Beach Road and soak in the plethora of restaurants and boutiques down that road. I always spot something new to try, it’s one of those roads that never gets boring. You can also take a small digestive detour towards Kite Beach (marked on the map below) which has a lovely jogging/walking track and a great community vibe. As you walk down Jumeirah Beach road, you will eventually hit up on the Seashell Cafeteria to your right, and then take the right onto Al Athar Street soon after.

If Control Restaurant feels too far outside the your Safa Park radius, then keep things more constrained and just start at humble old Labeeb Grocery on Jumeirah Beach Road, right across from Arz Lebanon. They make fresh regag, which is essentially an Emirati crêpe with totally unFrench ingredients like eggs, cream cheese, chilli sauce, mahyahwah (fish sauce) and Omani potato chips – all in one crackery bundle. You get regag at almost every festival in Dubai and I find it hard to vouch for it as something wildly special. But I won’t deny that I enjoy watching how they spread the dough on the regag pans. If you’re not sure whether you want to try it or not, you can watch this video I did with an Indonesian TV crew, minutes 2:21 to 4:41.

Stop 2 (optional): Camel meat shawarma at Zaina. [Phone: 04-3944990]

If you over-ordered and went far past the one kabab per person limit at Stop 1, then skip Zaina and move on. But if you walked off the kababs or you opted for the lighter regag option and still have tummy space for three more courses, then you may as well lob a camel meat shawarma into the game. This stop also helps to delay that soul-destroying moment when the clumsily shaven face of Safa Park veers into view.

Zaina is one of those non-descript cafeterias with its only claim to fame being the “Zaina Camel” section of the menu: Camel kabab, Camel shawarma, Camel shawarma plate.

The 8-dirham camel shawarma is a fair bargain, with a few chunks of what feel less like shawarma shavings and more like chopped-up bits of ground camel kebab. The pita is so severely stuffed with leaves that you have to gnaw through a forest of greens to get to each camel chunk. But the meat itself is appropriately tender and caramelized, almost lamb-like to the taste but with a much heavier after-effect on the tummy after you’ve scarfed the camel roll down. I’ve never felt light and springy after consuming camel meat, and this sandwich checks off that heavy, hump-in-my-tum feeling that I’ve had in the past after consuming camel meatballs, camel kabsa or dry fried camel.

This shawarma will never make it to your ‘Best of’-anything list, but at least you can walk away from the food trail saying you’d tried a camel meat shawarma in Dubai.

When you step out of Zaina, you have no choice but to face a severely bruised Safa park, with all its former glory now heavily bandaged up with red and white construction barricades. Stop in respectful silence, say a prayer for every other surviving park in the city, place a brick on your nostalgia and keep walking on for another 2.5 kilometers – about the same distance of the now-destroyed jogging track around the Park-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

Steps away from the new urban restaurant and shopping developments down Al Wasl Road, a cramped little Parsi restaurant promises to reward diners who stumble across it with a fish marinade so flavourful that even a Bengali blogger like Mita can’t fault it.

The Parsis are a small community of the original Persian Zoroastrians who left Persia during the Muslim invasion after the 8th century and made India their home. While they are famed for their culinary talent back in Mumbai, I’ve never had a chance to taste their cuisine until this first experience at two-year old Kabab Bistro.

Patra ni machi is made by slathering fish with a thick coriander-mint-coconut paste and then steaming it in a banana leaf so that all the flavours create magic in a bundle. Traditionally, the fish of choice is pomfret which may be served at Kabab Bistro if you give them a three-hour heads-up. We tried the less authentic version with cream dory, but the lack of authenticity didn’t keep us from forking off every last morsel of chutney and moist tender fish off the leaf. It was all I could do to not grab the leaves and scrape them clean with my teeth, oreo-style.

With dessert still pending, the sweet lassi or mango lassi might be overkill on a food trail, so opt for a tall glass of digestive, salty buttermilk and retreat before your eyes get attracted to other intriguing Parsi words on the menu like mutton sali boti (which I would highly recommend, paired with the accompanying shoestring potato chips and an order of tender tawa paratha) and chicken farcha (which I wouldn’t order again – bony egged-up chicken nuggets are just not my thing).

If you really had room, and I mean, REALLY truly had a considerable amount of tummy space still left inside you, then and then alone should you order the mutton sali boti or the Parsi dhansak with brown rice. Dhansak is boneless mutton cooked in a creamy broth of lentils, a broth that does exceedingly well when slopped over nutty brown rice speckled with caramelized onions. Where the broth excels, the chewy mutton chunks do not, so you may consider trying a veggie dhansak to save yourself jammed jaws.

When you’re done, step out and smell the flowers. Literally. There’s a plant shop that has created a dreamy little space right outside the restaurant. Walk about the block, pop a button, and get ready for dessert.

Thankfully, the last two stops are on the same block as Kebab Bistro, so you’re just steps away from the finish line.

While it would have been prudent to walk through the trail rather than drive, I will admit that this last stop fares best as a drive-through. The local, authentic way of ordering karak chai is by pulling up outside the cafeteria, lowering your window and honking so that the teaboy can run over for your order. It sounds terribly lazy, privileged and spoilt, and make no mistakes about it, it is. But drive-through chai is part of Dubai’s definition of authenticity and I’m not using my blog to fight it.

Nasmat Al Sahra serves a mean cup of well-boiled karak chai with the aromatic gust of cardamom and ginger ruffling through your nostrils on the first sip, followed by the comfort of Rainbow evaporated milk to wash down all the sins of a food trail past. But upon closer comparison, One shop down, Istecanat Shay does a more cardamom-spiked version that is the stronger, more fragrant brew of the two rivals.

Both cafeterias fall just nanometres short of the sickly sweet concoction that most other chai joints around Dubai tend to serve, but don’t expect the best chai in Dubai here either. Expect nothing more than a chai of conveniently-located redemption, a chai that will help pull you away from the brink of food coma even as your fingers are pushing you right back to the edge with toothpick-fulls of luqaimat: deep-fried dough dripping with sesame-specked date molasses (dibs). The Filipino who fries up these Emirati dumplings at Nasmat Al Sahra does a reasonable job – a bit too doughy, but every third luqaimat will aspire to that near-perfect balance of outer crisp and internal pillow, all doused with liberal double-dipped amounts of dibs.

Long-Stretch Option: http://www.mappedometer.com/?maproute=379028. I actually believe that the ambitious walker would suffer a net loss of calories if he/she were to perform this food trail on foot (ideally paired with jumping jacks at every stop light.)

Post-Food Trail Digestion suggestion: If you haven’t walked the 8 kilometres to complete the trail, then drive up to the Open Beach that’s close by for a post-digestion walk. Stroll off the layers of food, whilst reminding yourself that for every tree razed down to make way for a fake canal through Safa Park, the small guys are still out there in the backstreets, just doing their eclectic culinary thing rather than trying to be Venice.

(Until they all get recruited to row gondolas down the fake canal.)

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/when-sorrow-over-safa-park-strikes-distract-yourself-with-this-food-trail/feed/12Nigerian cow’s tail, fishy cookies, camel meatballs and other food moments to celebrate.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/food-memories-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/food-memories-dubai/#commentsMon, 08 Dec 2014 06:53:00 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8381Since my last post on greasy comfort-laden strips of Turkish doner, I’ve had a couple of memorable food discoveries that I have to share with anyone who cares to know. These are food memories that have connected me ina deep, fulfilling … Continue reading →]]>

Since my last post on greasy comfort-laden strips of Turkish doner, I’ve had a couple of memorable food discoveries that I have to share with anyone who cares to know. These are food memories that have connected me ina deep, fulfilling way to some culture, some neighbourhood, or some person making the most incredible lamb ribs in a dug-up corner of the city. Celebrate these moments with me.

If you ask the receptionist of the London City hotel in Naif where to find the African restaurant, be prepared for him to return a question: Do you mean the Nigerian one, or the Angolan one?

King Taste is the admittedly dodgy Nigerian cave where you can get a simple goat curry with a tomato-throbbing pile of oily jollof rice. Or you can brave some of the more adventurous dishes, like the grayish cow’s tail – a long tube of, well, tail – that challenges the foreign diner with an embarrassing eating conundrum. Gnawing through a halved but still awkwardly long and tapered (but plucked, thankfully) tail with your bare hands feels quite primitive. But try to use a fork and knife to pry away the pink innards within the gray shiny tail skin exterior, and the darn thing will roll away from you. It’s a dish that I didn’t quite figure out how to consume and quickly ditched for the easier to scoop sweetish beans and rice.

Cow’s tail in the foreground, and black-as-the-depths-of-the-sea dried catfish at King Taste in Naif

I’ve also tried the preserved blackened catfish, a grizzly nob of cassava flour (Garri) and some vegetable variants that had the overwhelming aroma of stables. These dishes are admittedly not for the cowardly foodie, and I’ve yet to wake up craving the flavours I ate that afternoon. But it is Old Dubai-occurring phenomena like King Taste which remind you that all it takes is a few plates of unknown cultural territory and a poster advertising ‘Point and Kill Catfish’ to whisk you away from that known glittery land south of the creek.

I keep seeing the same celebrity chef names on rewind. It’s time we start recognizing other talent, talent that shines even in the dismal center of that construction wasteland which is now Safa Park. If people could wait for three hours for a darn cheesecake at Dubai Mall, then please, for heaven’s sake, why can we not weather a scenic walk through whatever’s left of the park, sink down at the Archive, shed a tear for the ripped-out landscape, and then sink into the most undeniably seductive miso-glazed bultarra lamb ribs in town.

Whinny like a horse as the umami flavour of the miso glaze and the butter-like threads of meat just do good things in your mouth. So good, they’re almost sinfully bad. I was so overcome that I felt compelled to walk up to every menu-reading customer in the Archive, demand that they put the menu down and just order the miso ribs.

I was held back in my seat by my more discreet partner. So I’ve plastered it up on the blog so that no one dare order anything else when they’re at the Archive. Unless you have a colossal appetite, in which case fit in the beef sliders and a slab of passion fruit cheesecake as well.

Fish cookies from Malleh Gourmet.

The past two years have seen a greater awareness and some interesting innovations on traditional Emirati food. One of the creative pioneers in this food wave is Nazek Al Sabbagh who founded Malleh Gourmet along with her food science-trained sister.

Anyone who can take preserved, salted fish and transform it into a beautifully-packaged gourmet product that is backed up by some serious hygienic and flavour standards, deserves your business. If you don’t like fish or the thought of preserved fish, pre-order the crumbly short-bread-like mahyawah cookies, made with housemade fish sauce pressed out of anchovies. The fishy smell magically vanishes in the finished baked product – I’ve fed it to my fish-averse father who found it rather salty, but not fishy. The lingering saltiness of the anchovies mingles with the butter in the cookie to replicate the uncanny flavour of parmesan. It’s the perfect rich, salty snack to pair with a cup of steaming hot kadhak chai.

Nazek is an inspiration. One hour with her will give you the most interesting ways to apply preserved fish products in modern-day cooking techniques and commonly loved foods. Any discerning chef in the city would be well-rewarded to take the time out to find this lady, taste her product at the store in Jumeirah, appreciate her passion and energy, and figure out how to incorporate at least one of the preserved fish products into their everyday dishes. They sell Malleh (dried, salted and spiced tuna), Sehnah (spiced and ground anchovies) or the Mahyahwah (an Iranian tradition which some say has been assimilated into Emirati dining culture; it involves extracting sauce from anchovies) and of course, fish cookies which are made-to-order.

Ursula is a German camel herder who probably deserves a book written about her rather than a paragraph. You will find a ton about her online, so go out there and read up about one of the most fascinating and high-intensity women you will find tending a camel farm in this city.

I visited her as part of a research mission and decided to make a party out of it. She fed about twenty of us the most enjoyable camel meat dish that I have ever tasted in Dubai – camel meatballs. It sounds wrong, but you’ll quickly forge that with one lemon-infused taste of ground, well-cooked and flavourful camel meat. The meatballs I devoured at Ushi’s farm put to shame every other camel meat variation I’ve tried in the city – especially those darned camel burgers which are marginally worse than eating a hockey puck slammed between burger buns,

Fighting for center stage with the camel meat balls were Ushi’s Emirati margooga, a hearty vegetable stew with a tomato broth and pieces of raw dough simmered up like dumplings in chicken soup. Can you imagine eating this warm dish in a tent under the stars in a tranquil part of the desert, without 4×4 tracks to kill the dunes and without a skimpily-clad belly dancer making the guy next to you lift his shirt and shake things that had best be left stationary? Just reflecting on this now is like a mental spa treatment for me even weeks after I visited the farm.

More eclectic finds in Naif.

Naif is a bottomless pit of discovery. Where else would you find a herbal shop with calamus root, orchid tubers and chebulic myrobalans?

Or a sweet shop famed in the Muslim Bohra community, famous in Mumbai, famous in Naif.

I won’t tell you where to find them, it kills the spirit of discovery. Go to Naif, get lost in the labrynth that makes up pretty much every side street of the neighbourhood, and internalize one of the oldest parts of Old Dubai through your tastebuds. Create your own food moments to celebrate.

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/food-memories-dubai/feed/1Layali’s Tonbik Shawarma: The greasy zenith of Turkish comfort food in Naif.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/turkish-shawarma-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/turkish-shawarma-dubai/#commentsMon, 10 Nov 2014 03:43:09 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8365The first time I sunk my teeth into the Tonbik Shawarma, the saucy swirl of condiments and crunchy cabbage and tender chicken and plump grease-sodden fries awoke the sleeping endorphins in my blood stream. This was not sophisticated food. I … Continue reading →]]>

The first time I sunk my teeth into the Tonbik Shawarma, the saucy swirl of condiments and crunchy cabbage and tender chicken and plump grease-sodden fries awoke the sleeping endorphins in my blood stream.

This was not sophisticated food. I didn’t feel particularly proud as I contemplated whether the ketchup in the sandwich was Hunt’s or Heinz. Most likely Hunt’s, it had the sweetish runniness that felt you’d never squirt out of a more tart-tomatoed Heinz bottle. I was surprised that someone would pair ketchup with toum, the creamy garlic oil emulsion smeared across every decent shawarma in the city, and shocked that my body was enjoying it.

The sandwich fell neatly into that category of comfort food which gives you a sense of childish unrefined pleasure, only faintly dampened by the greasy guilt slithering down your arteries. You won’t be judged in my books if a satisfied sigh escapes your lips as you scarf down oily fries and chicken stuffed into the sauce-slathered mouth of a toasted bun. Only because I did too.

Layali Istanbul doesn’t aspire to serve you the most regal of Ottoman delicacies. With a location in the armpit of Frij Murar, that little busy strip of road which closes off bachelor-dominated and spit-soaked Naif, it would be presumptuous to expect anything more. The restaurant is only 8 months old and with a hummus that tastes marginally worse than boiled mashed mealy chickpeas (take note of the grizzly offender below) I suspect that it’s the greasy shawarmas that are keeping the place going.

The menu is just a formality. Don’t let fancy notions of fresh-baked cheese pides and lahmacun under the ‘Bakery Section’ get the better of you. Said bakery does not exist. Nor must you assume that the ‘potato dish’ is anything more than a bowl of French fries. If you’re looking for meaty options on the shawarma, take note that they have only two kinds – chicken shawarma, and chicken shawarma. A second shawarma spit clearly demarcated for a meat shawarma stands desolate, tempting meat-lovers with crazed notions of a lamb shawarma that is never to be.

I will hand it to Layali that they do a mean Ayran. Smooth, light, buttery and slightly salty, this buttermilk is a refreshing way to de-grease your gullet before the next ketchup, garlic and grease-slathered bite of chicken shawarma.

Layali Istanbul does chicken shawarmas, and that’s what it does. Most of the people who’d walked in seemed to get either the lean chicken shawarma wrap or the chunkier option, smacked into a nice crisp pita-bun-hybrid. I’ve also tried their Iskender Kabab plate, which is meant to be served with strips of lamb but is substituted with the fast- (and only-) moving chicken, a blasphemous poultry twist to a revered Turkish dish.

The Iskender plate is not something you run to on a ‘cheat day’ of your week, but rather, a ‘cheat year’ of your life. The magnanimity of the crime dawns on you only after you stare back at your reflection in the empty plate, a guilty face looking murky and orange in the stagnant oil spill left behind after you committed the sauce and butter-soaked soaked sin.

Layali’s version of Iskender is far from being culturally authentic – there are other places in Dubai with the ‘right’ version of Iskendar kabab – but I personally found it quite hard to push aside Layali’s version on grounds of failed authenticity. Strips of shawarma and spongy cubes of pide bread are baked in a cinnamon-fragrant tomato sauce with a wobbly dollop of yoghurt on the side. The butter and cinnamon soak the pide chunks through and through, such that every bite of shawarma is alternated with a bread cube that brings you dangerously close to a sweet pancake or French toast. The dish is strangely and criminally addictive.

I’m sure one can venture past the shawarma spit, but vegetarians beware, unless a bowl of French fries dipped in ground gritty chickpea paste catches your fancy. There are a few kabab and ‘meat in paper’ options which might hold potential, but I’ll probably need a good artery-cleanse before I return to try the rest of the menu.

Layali Istanbul Frij Murar, opposite Hyatt Regency, at the end of the block after KFC to your right. Refer to my google map for more exact coordinates. Phone: 04-273-0333

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/turkish-shawarma-dubai/feed/2Tahtah Malleh – Preserved fish and rice made by the gifted hands of an Emirati mother.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/tahtah-malleh-preserved-fish-and-rice-emirati/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/tahtah-malleh-preserved-fish-and-rice-emirati/#commentsTue, 28 Oct 2014 09:48:22 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8354In Emirati lingo, Malleh means preserved fish – from the word ‘Milh’ or salt. It was the natural way of preserving fish back in those days when desert dwellers didn’t have refrigerators. And while I’ve eaten malleh a few times … Continue reading →]]>

In Emirati lingo, Malleh means preserved fish – from the word ‘Milh’ or salt. It was the natural way of preserving fish back in those days when desert dwellers didn’t have refrigerators. And while I’ve eaten malleh a few times before, nothing comes close to the plate of Tahtah Malleh that mum and I are devouring at the home of the Emirati lady who runs Tawasol restaurant in Old Dubai. At the restaurant, she goes by ‘Madham.’

This soft-spoken lady commands a presence and I have the utmost respect for how she has run her restaurant in Deira since 1999. Far from the typical hands-off owner who snips through the ribbon during a fancy launch party and then never returns to the restaurant, Madham is very intimately connected to the kitchen. The rice selection, the spice mixes, the portion sizes – they are all determined under her watchful eye. I’ve often walked into the restaurant at the end of the month and seen her signing cheques with the manager – paperwork that could have easily been driven to her home but that she chooses to complete in her restaurant, her brainchild. I fell so deeply in love with the food at her restaurant a few years ago that the tents, peppery lentil soup and massive platters of spiced meat and rice have become a mainstay of my Middle Eastern food trails.

While Madham’s eloquent daughter explains how her mother trained the chef, I realize that even the restaurant food is no match for what she has prepared for us today. As the two ladies unveil the Tahtah Malleh, rice layered with preserved fish, a buttery spiced fragrance escapes from under the lid. Mum and I instinctively pause in mid-conversation, inhale deeply, and let the intoxicating aroma seize our senses. Any vestige of restraint hurriedly submits its resignation letter and pelts out the door.

Madham had soaked meaty strips of house-made preserved kingfish (canaad) and tuna (ghbab) to extract the salt, and then cooked them with preserved black limes, tomatoes, onions, anise, coriander, turmeric, chili pepper and baharat mix (Arabic spice blend, usually containing cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, etc.) I go back for seconds of the malleh, lingering by the dish for some extra bits of tuna, all the while praying fervently that restraint will rethink its decision and come back to fill the vacancy. The outsides of the fish are rubbed with spices, the insides reddish like lamb, umami like soy sauce, fibrous and smoky like beef jerky. The rugged flavours of the fish are pronounced against the tender buttery backdrop of basmati rice, each grain fully elongated and a few clumped together with patches of dry tomato-onion gravy.

Such a simple, yet inexplicably powerful dish. One that speaks to the resourcefulness of the Bedouins, to the spice and rice trade with India, to the magical hand of a lady that can make preserved fish taste like gold. By the time I reach home, I am craving the dish all over again. Thankfully, we had not refused the doggie bag that Madham had placed in our car – turns out, she has packed the entire meal and sent it home with us. My face must have given the vacancy away.

I fall asleep thinking of how important it is – even more so now than never – to not just have another mall of the world, but a better forum for cultural connection. Not another place where you can buy a Zara dress, but a place where people can appreciate the breadth of local culinary and herbal craft, like the warm, bitter, jelly-like habbat-al hamra (garden cress seeds) that Madham had brewed with a drop of butter into a wholesome wintery drink for us. Where would you learn that this drink has been traditionally consumed by new mothers to regain their strength and rebuild iron, or fed to babies to help them sleep when the mother is unable to lactate properly?

Where could you gain culinary insights from an Emirati mother over her homemade crumbly khabees, with the heady buttered aroma of toasted flour, saffron and sugar? Where could you enjoy a platter of Tahtah Malleh, only to drive home smelling flowery and exotic because the ladies of the house had perfumed you on your way out?

The government and a few individuals in the private sector are making a worthwhile push to spread Emirati culinary awareness, with the most imminent event featuring Emirati culinary culture being right around the corner – the Dubai World Hospitality Championships. I hope to see you there.

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/tahtah-malleh-preserved-fish-and-rice-emirati/feed/5Help keep the new Taiwanese ‘Honey Ice Cream Dessert Shop’ alive.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/taiwanese-taro-ball-cafe-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/taiwanese-taro-ball-cafe-dubai/#commentsTue, 14 Oct 2014 08:29:22 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=833928/10/2014: The sinister niggling feeling in my heart played out folks, this place has shut down. A real tragedy that we won’t be able to support the Taiwanese taro-ball maker anymore. Two months ago, a bubble gum-pink sign and fairy lights popped … Continue reading →]]>

28/10/2014: The sinister niggling feeling in my heart played out folks, this place has shut down. A real tragedy that we won’t be able to support the Taiwanese taro-ball maker anymore.

Two months ago, a bubble gum-pink sign and fairy lights popped up like an effeminate pinky finger in the midst of truckie- and cabbie-dominated Muteena road. It is a Taiwanese dessert café – eccentric, exotic, and one that is far too large given its non-existent clientele on that road. No one in the area seems to give a damn that it exists, but my heart goes out to this pink underdog that is dishing out shaved ice, taro balls and herbal jellies in a sea of hefty kababs and oily curries.

Taro balls are a Taiwanese specialty made out of the starchy roots of the tropical taro or colocasia plant. Alan Davidson (The Oxford Companion to Food) describes it as a ‘corm. Cultivated varieties are usually the size of a very large potato, roughly top shaped and circled all over their surface with rough ridges…The skin is brown and hairy. Inside, the flesh maybe white, pink, or purple.” The plant itself is native to India and my talented mum deep-fries taro slices with onions and often pairs them with sour tamarind lentils. The dish is so addictive that I usually polish off a quarter of it even before it hits the dining table.

But taro often features in South East Asian desserts as well. It’s just not something that has hit mainstream Dubai, which is why the ‘Honey Dessert Ice Cream Shop’ is like a no man’s land for most of the day A lone customer might walk in, lured in by the promise of ‘Ice Cream’ on the purple signboard. Within two minutes of realizing that the Taiwanese ice cream is as close to ice cream as is a basket of oranges, they’ve probably retreated back to the exit and switched courses to the Baskin Robbins next door.

But to that lone ice cream-craving diner, I say stay. I say make the drive out to Muteena and help that bubble gum-pink signboard flicker on. I’m scared that the café’s time is running out and hence, my urgent plea to you to keep something as fun and weird and intriguing alive because who knows, if you wake up tomorrow craving a bowl of taro balls and strings of glassy herbal jelly, this place won’t be around to love you back.

When you step inside, don’t be turned off by the deserted feel of the café. People in Dubai drive miles for cupcakes, taro balls simply haven’t caught on yet. The pink walls will glow back at you with the story of Taiwanese Brother and Sister Fu who handed over their secret recipe to Meet Fresh, an Australian brand dedicated to dishing out the ‘soft and nice light texture of taro, delicious and chewy taro ball desserts, fresh and soft herbal jelly, and delicate and traditional tofu pudding.’ So yes, it’s a bit of a roundabout import – Taiwan to Australia to Dubai.

A spectacled Taiwanese man wiggles out from behind the counter in the rare instance that a customer mistakenly walks in looking for ice cream. He has an aura of a mad scientist fused with the tough love of a strict grandma, just as you’d expect from anyone crafting orange, purple and olive-coloured homemade taro balls. If you take the time to learn about him, peek over the counter as he’s preparing your desserts for you, ask him for a recommendation – or as I did, hop with unrestrained joy when he started meticulously concocting my shaved ice dessert – you begin to realize how much passion and detail goes into crafting one of his desserts.

It’s not even the taro balls (pictured above) that I’m a fan of, the chewy gummy texture being far less appealing than the shaved ice mound with peanuts, boiled beans, noodle jelly, a substance optimistically named as ‘white immortality,’ and an extra request for condensed milk that I felt would help to draw the disparate ingredients together as one sweet whole. What I love is how different those desserts are to everyday ice cream, cakes or whatever else suits your fancy. There’s an element of intrigue and discovery, and a hat tip to one of Taiwan’s most beloved desserts.

BEFORE

AFTER

Sensing my excitement for the exotic, the Taiwanese host also brought out a sample of a dark herbal jelly, a mildly sweet and floral substance that delicately quivered with intrigue of a healing substance known only to its magical maker. But if herbal jelly sounds a little too exotic, opt for something more familiar like their pleasing ‘yoghourt’ pudding with coconut milk, sweet mango, strawberries, kiwis and curious little slippery globes that burst into a refreshing mango Maaza-like liquid.

Some of these Taiwanese desserts are definitely an acquired taste, but during a hot humid afternoon or evening, you can’t go wrong with a shaved ice dessert or a cool milky pudding. Especially with temperatures in Dubai still being annoyingly high, I’ll admit that there’s been many a night that I wished this Taiwanese dessert haunt was a few steps closer to home.

Honey Dessert Ice Cream Shop Muteena Road Deira, Dubai

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/taiwanese-taro-ball-cafe-dubai/feed/8The Freshest Catch: Seasoned, Grilled and Served Up at the Old Deira Fish Market.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/sustainable-fresh-grilled-fish-market-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/sustainable-fresh-grilled-fish-market-dubai/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 08:02:41 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8313Our heads jerked in unison towards the moving source of the panic. Loud gruff screams ripped through the din of the fish market just as the fishmongers were packing up their stalls for their afternoon siesta. The chase was on. A bluish white blur of … Continue reading →]]>

Our heads jerked in unison towards the moving source of the panic. Loud gruff screams ripped through the din of the fish market just as the fishmongers were packing up their stalls for their afternoon siesta. The chase was on. A bluish white blur of movement could be spotted at the middle, at the far end, in the distance, now gone. A fisherman was running for all it was worth, chased by a burly guard who was fast, but not fast enough. The nimble fisherman bounded across the road, leapt over the barricade and vanished in a flash. The guard, glossy with sweat and fuming with anger, stormed back in the direction of the municipality office. Another fisherman flouting the market regulations had gotten away.

Seconds laster, all heads dipped back into their own individual stalls, back into the chaotically synchronized din of the market. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.

I challenge you to be bored at the fish and vegetable market. It simply isn’t possible. You might leave with smelly hair, clothes splattered with dirty water stains and a pounding head after a chatty fishmonger points out that the prized ‘snapper’ you just haggled over three stalls away is a rubbish fish that he wouldn’t even feed his cat. But bored you will never be.

My goal of visiting the market that afternoon was to identify a fish from the “green sustainable list” and hand it over to the Egyptian grill masters in the market to cook it up for me.

The ten-year old “Grill and Shark” Restaurant in the small Al Ras complex next door to the market offers a brilliant way to expand your fish horizons by taking your bag of raw and unfamiliar seafood and grilling it up within an hour so you can get a first-hand taste of the fish before investing in a freezer full of it. Obviously, don’t be persuaded by the ‘Shark’ in their name to go down the unsustainable route – there are a ton of better options out there so try to educate yourself. Venture beyond the unsustainable favourites like hammour and kingfish (canaad) and let them show you how to grill up otherwise unfamiliar fish on the green sustainable choice list at www.choosewisely.ae.

Incidentally, afternoon is the worst possible time you can visit the market. All the fishmongers are swooshing their tables clean, and other than a few traders desperately trying to lob their wire baskets of tuna into your hands, you get nothing but the tail end of the catch.

I ploughed through the empty market, determined to find ‘Jesh’ (orange-spotted Trevally) amidst the sea of leftover tuna, and finally found myself pushed in front of a wheel barrow of supposedly ”still alive” fish. They looked dead as dead could be.

As I spoke to Gulzar who was manning the barrow, a golden streak jerked out of the corner of my eye. A two-bar seabream, Faskar, was still writhing with life. The fish were just caught, I had lucked out even when the market was closing for siesta. I bagged the fish for a barely-negotiated ten dirhams and raced in the direction of the Egyptians. On the way there, I met Gul Sher, another fishmonger who’d been introduced to me by the lovely Mishti at www.stovetopdancing.blogspot.com. Gul Sher has a heart of gold. He graciously slipped in two Omani tiger prawns into my twitching bag and refused to look back at me as I begged him for the price.

In the one hour and all of five dirhams that it took the Egyptians to fire up my fish and prawns, I walked around the market, repaid Gul Sher with a golden Sri Lankan coconut brimming with sweet water, and sank down on a bench with him to share stories about the market, my life, Dubai, the world. Little conversations with the people who feed you are some of the most fulfilling conversations you can have.

The Egyptians had baked my Faskar in a salty coat of tomato, onions and garlic. Their ovens smelled incredible. I just stood there gaping as they pulled some sort of massive butterflied fish out of the fire, the aroma of sweet baked garlic making me dance with joy and making them laugh as they watched a girl dance over the smell of garlic.

I paid the Keralites next door five dirhams to use their dining space. They chivalrously cleared the men off a table for me, sat me down with plates and tissues, offered me a choice of parottas fried in the morning or fresh tandoori bread, and some coconut curry to pair with the fish. Another three dirhams for the curry and parottas.

(Sitting at the Keralite restaurant is not for the faint-hearted. This is a real fishmonger’s hangout and if that’s not your thing, then just grab your grilled fish from the Egyptians and drive back home to enjoy. Or drive up to the Deira creek and open up your grilled presents on one of the benches facing the water.)

The innards of the Faskar were coarse and meaty, the meat to bone-ratio on the size I had bought was perfect. The best way to eat the fish would be to scoop up the seasoning on the skin and combine it with the white flesh, the seasoning being too salty on its own and the flesh being too bland on its own. This is the sort of fish that would do best with being butterflied, coated on the inside with lemon and seasonings, re-sealed and then baked. A squeeze of lemon or malt vinegar would also make the fish speak volumes louder on flavour. If I were to take this fish home the next time, I know exactly what I would do with it. Or even if I were to ask the Egyptians to prepare it for me again, I’d be really specific about how I’d like it prepared. This is the beauty of doing a new fish experiment with them – taste, strategize and then hit the flavour target on the next go.

The lure of fresh-caught seafood for lunch is so powerful that it can isolate you on your own momentary island of culinary reverie. I was done with lunch before I could even process the thought of squeezing lemon over my fat pink tiger prawns, each of which I generously dunked in the Keralite coconut gravy with stellar results. A simple butter, garlic and sea salt garnish would have also done those prawns great justice. A good thought for my next visit.

Lunch was heavy, but strangely not the kind that would be a reason to skip dinner. Yet, something about the experience of buying the live fish, chatting with the fishmongers, absorbing the smells and screams at the market, sitting around in a bachelor haunt to have my fresh-baked fish with butter-laden parottas, it was such an immersive experience that I stayed full for the entire day. My heart and mind had absorbed so much in two hours, that they closed themselves off to any another experience that evening.

My next pick for a fishy experiment will be Jesh or Anfooz (Yellow Bar Angelfish), whichever one I find jumping about in Gulzar’s wheelbarrow next week. If you like seafood, then you’ve simply got to go to the market and experiment your way around too. Don’t tell me that Buqtair is more convenient and their fish is the bomb, I was once part of their fan following too. But now, I’d rather skip the overpriced and deep-fried hammour and shaari (both options are unsustainable) at the beach shack and go fish for more sustainable options at the Deira market.

For high quality fish: Gulzar (left of photo below) – 050-694-1469. Walk outside of the market, between the fish market and the mosque to your right. Take a left at the end of the market, and walk down the side. Gulzar’s stall is one of the stalls lining the perimeter on the far end of the market, about two stalls before you end up stepping into the utensils and veggies section.

For wild and farmed Omani prawns: Gul Sher (right of photo below) – 055-120-4200. His stall directly faces them mosque to the right of the market.

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/sustainable-fresh-grilled-fish-market-dubai/feed/13Hotpot haunt in Nasr Square, Deira that’s totally worth the hunt.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/chongqing-liuyishou-hotpot-restaurant-dubai/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/chongqing-liuyishou-hotpot-restaurant-dubai/#commentsMon, 01 Sep 2014 14:51:57 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8293The last time I truly enjoyed Chinese hotpot was three years ago on Baniyas Road. Despite its worn walls and tired décor, Xiao Wei Yang assures the sort of eccentric experience that has made it a widely known ‘secret’ for … Continue reading →]]>

The last time I truly enjoyed Chinese hotpot was three years ago on Baniyas Road. Despite its worn walls and tired décor, Xiao Wei Yang assures the sort of eccentric experience that has made it a widely known ‘secret’ for anyone in the city with an adventurous palette and restlessly hungry soul (and patience to hunt down a parking spot in the oversubscribed lots).

To be honest, the excitement of dunking everything from mushrooms to crabs into a fondue-like pot was so immense that I can’t quite remember how the broth tasted back then. I do know that the broths I’ve tasted at similar hotpot restaurants in International City were nothing spectacular enough to write about. Over time, without a strong savoury recollection, hotpot faded off my food radar.

The place that has made this simmering communal soup bowl bleep back on my screen is Chongqing Liuyishou. This unpronounceably-named restaurant is in a league of its own, as should be any place that ditches the eerie rocking cat for a happy cow-faced goat boasting an oversized thumb. And no eyeballs. It’s these kinds of places that restore my faith in the quirky eccentricities of Old Dubai.

Three things make this place my new hotpot favourite, over and above Xiao Wei Yang.Firstly, they have a really clued-on Bangladeshi server called Awal who takes a personal interest in helping you decipher the hotpot menu. This is really critical if you have no idea what you’re doing when faced with the menu ordering form full of things like Thai Fungus and Baconic of Beef. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. And it helps when you have someone like Awal to walk you through the exotic details.

Awal not only walks you through the menu, but he blesses your spice selection based on your nationality (‘you’re Filipino? Can’t do spice, only mild! You – you’re Indian, you can do spicy.’), pre-empts any menu misconceptions especially if you’re cluelessly trying to match dishes to photos (‘you picked this dish because you thought it was the same as this picture?’ Golly yes, how did you know? ‘I know, but it’s not the same dish. THIS is the one you want.’) and is your lifeguard when you drown in the variety of dipping sauces (‘You took every sauce in a separate bowl?!? No, you can’t enjoy it like that.’ Seriously Awal, I prefer it that way. ‘Fine. But you won’t enjoy it. Come, I will show you.’ And true enough, the combined sesame and mushroom sauce he created for me will forever be my go-to dipping sauce recipe.) If you’re a hotpot noob, you’ll be hugging Awal like a doe-eyed hotpot graduate by the time you step out of the door.

The second reason why Chongqing scores top marks in the hotpot category is because their dipping sauces are well-ordered and stacked up in a way that doesn’t feel scary and foreign and wiggling with frog legs if you know what I mean. Not like any dipping sauce display in any hotpot restaurant I’ve seen has squirmy stuff in the sauces, but it helps when the restaurant goes an extra mile to make things look pretty and well-labelled.

Chongqing’s Dipping Sauces

Because you can never have enough chilli.

Beef Foam served atop Soft Like Likes, obviously.

(The beef foam turned out to be boring old salt mislabeled as something infinitely more exciting. Thankfully, they did have beef foam in another bowl for those who simply crave that nebulous meaty X-factor in their food.)

But the main and most important reason why this hotpot restaurant is one that I’ll be returning in the winter (which is actually when you’re supposed to eat hotpot – not in the 50 degree afternoon heat that I chose for my food jaunt) is because their broth is special.Really special. You simply can’t sidestep the flavour. We picked #106 on the menu aptly called ‘Appetizing Tomato Pot’ – a dual twin pot with a tomato broth on one side and a ‘mildly’ spicy broth on the other.

Both types of broth spoke of a simmering stock process that had executed the right balance across its seasonings – ginger, garlic, pepper, whoever knows what else (in the wise words of Jerry who lent his tummy for this lunch: when in a Chinese restaurant, don’t ask too many questions.) The tomato broth played out like a perfectly synchronized composition, one where even the keenest of tasters would find it challenging to single out any one flavour from the well-orchestrated, harmonious whole.

The spicy broth was fantastic, less because I can handle spice (I can’t) but more because of the type of chillies used. When you sip the soup, the spice travels like a prickly steamroller from the tip of your tongue, towards the sides, then to the back. And just when you think it’s all done and dusted, the steamroller goes barging backwards and stuns your ears with a scarily unexpected spice shock. This happens only on the first sip. Every spoonful after that just adds to the fiery burn that has now erupted all across your face. Mind you, this was the mildly spicy broth.

If you do plan to inflict the spicy broth on yourself, I’d recommend grabbing a Chinese iced tea to reward yourself. It tastes of some sweet combination of apples and faint mango and is monumentally more exciting in its packaging than Coke or Pepsi will ever be. When in China, be a Rockstar.

If you’re going in to try this place and need a helping hand on what to pair with your broth, here’s my list for your dunking pleasure: lamb chops (they arrive boiled, but dunk them in the bubbling broth before consumption), flatbeef flakes (razor thin, they cook almost instantly and then disintegrate into the soup if you don’t fish them out fast enough), seafood dumplings (the best dunking item on the list), mixed mushrooms, floppy triangles of ‘Chinese special dried tofu,’ kankong (aka swamp cabbage that doesn’t look swampy by any means, but rather a vibrant refreshing green), handmade noodles (it’s sacrilege to not dunk handmade noodles into the broth, even though it’s a royal pain to fish them back out.)

Next time I’ll ask them if I can have an egg to dunk in towards the end. I’ve read that it’s tradition and a runny egg with noodles seems right up my experimental alley, along with a couple of other tantalizing items like glutinous rice sesame balls, deep-fried dough sticks (a universal culinary protocol) and baconic of beef.

Chongqing Liuyishou Hotpot Restaurant Phone Number: 04-2293380, 050-1497496 Near Fish Roundabout behind Al Ghurair. If you have Al Ghurair to your right as you drive down towards Fish Roundabout, take a u-turn from the roundabout and park in the open parking on the right (i.e. across the street from Al Ghurair). Walk back towards the main road with Fish Roundabout, take a left heading into Naif and walk down the road. Take the second left and the restaurant will be to your right. DO NOT try to brave the parking situation in this area, your car is best left in the open parking lot. And for God’s sake, carry a smartphone equipped with Google maps and the link to the restaurant location pre-loaded in. Here’s my Google Map of hideouts with the restaurant location pinned to it.

]]>http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/chongqing-liuyishou-hotpot-restaurant-dubai/feed/19Finally, more pocket-friendly ways to fix that Thai Curry craving.http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/finally-more-pocket-friendly-ways-to-fix-that-thai-curry-craving/
http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/finally-more-pocket-friendly-ways-to-fix-that-thai-curry-craving/#commentsMon, 18 Aug 2014 06:07:25 +0000http://www.iliveinafryingpan.com/?p=8261 A spectacular serving of pineapple fried rice trumped the list of dishes that I’ve consumed over the past two weeks. Every grain was plumped up with the sort of savoury curry flavour that makes you salivate just thinking about it, with … Continue reading →]]>

A spectacular serving of pineapple fried rice trumped the list of dishes that I’ve consumed over the past two weeks. Every grain was plumped up with the sort of savoury curry flavour that makes you salivate just thinking about it, with little nobs of sweet pineapple and crunchy red peppers and the right amount of comforting grease to glue it all together. Honestly, just look at the size of that thing…

Little Bangkok has pleasantly surprised me. I rarely ever feel motivated to pen down my experiences at a chain but after three indulgent visits, this one definitely deserves a mention. I first spotted it in Abu Hail, covered in fairy lights and boasting its NOW OPEN sign in a neighbourhood that primarily specializes in mid- to low-priced Arabic food. My heart sank when I spotted it again in Oud Metha and realized that the restaurant was likely a home-grown chain. Online research only dissuaded me further – Little Bangkok had also swooped across JLT and Marina, in addition to having one more location that Is still to open on Sheikh Zayed. I’d be happy enough trying it, but this just isn’t the sort of place I usually feature on my blog.

But Little Bangkok has received a lot of positive feedback across its branches, and rightly so. They’ve got an airy, well-lit restaurant set-up with large frames of floating markets and colourful thatch-like lampshades that add to its intended street-style flair. They’ve got an interesting façade with plastic versions of Thai dishes that tease flies and hungry passerby’s with the appeal that only tiger prawns in sticky sauce and noodles in spiced broth can hold. They have a well-categorized menu with appetizing photos that do the trick in a moment of indecision. But most importantly, they’ve got a Penang Curry that’s lusciously creamy and brimming to the core with coconut milk and warming spices.

I’ve tried the Penang Curry with tender flattened strips of chicken as well as with plump pink prawns, and the lesson both times was to eat up, go find a bed right after. The last time I had something as memorable was at my favourite Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown, Philadelphia. It’s the sort of food that deep, happy slumbers are made of.

Not everything in Little Bangkok is a hit, but the hits are so flavourful that they more than make up for the blander misses. The jumbo prawns in sweet-sour sauce (Goong Tod Makham), the crispy duck with noodles and broth (Guay Tiew Ped Yang) and the sizzling beef (Kata Ron) were easily forgotten when I left the restaurant, while the chewy sticky glutinous globes stuffed with minced meat (Hum Sui Goh) or the refreshing rice paper spring rolls with an addictive vinegary dipping sauce (which is incidentally green and not red as depicted in the photo on the menu) are definitely memorable enough to be ordered again. The vibrant flavours of lemongrass, kaffir-lime leaves, fish sauce, vinegar and other traditional herbs and sauces shine through unmistakably in most of their dishes, to the point where I had to visit the restaurant three times last week until I could finally – or temporarily – distract myself with other foods.

Just to ensure some consistency control, I did go back to the branch I originally spotted in Abu Hail and it turns out that the branch was…not a branch at all. It was a completely different restaurant called Bangkok Town with a personality and ambiance that falls on the other end of the minimalist, street-style feel of Little Bangkok. Bangkok Town is one of those dimly-lit slumbering restaurants replete with cone-shaped purple cloth napkins, aromatic incense and intimate booths. It is a far cry from the overcrowded fish market that Little Bangkok tends to become during peak lunch and weekend hours. While Little Bangkok can often feel quite frenetic, Bangkok Town makes you want to sprawl flat across the table, pick an aroma and succumb to the strong, sleep-inducing hands of an expert masseuse.

Bangkok Town is no chain and I’ve only been there once thus far, having already stuffed up on enough curry and noodles over the past week to last me for at least another month of Thai food cravings. My initial feel was that the dishes have potential and are worthy of multiple trials to suss out the best of their cumbersome 189-item picture-less menu. The highlights included fried shrimp with lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, garlic and crispy caramelized strips of ginger (Koong Tod Tar Khai) and the fragrant coconut milk broth with tofu and vegetables (Tom Kha Je). Neither of these dishes had the same visual appeal of the dishes at chain phenomenon Little Bangkok, but pretty or not, they didn’t scrimp on flavour.

Bangkok Town also scored a few extra points with its complimentary dessert: water chestnuts, fleshy strips of coconut and some other undecipherable fruits and jellies in icy cool coconut milk. A summer elixir if you will, though we failed to grasp the name of the dessert or dissect its ingredients from our sweetly smiling but barely English-speaking Thai server.

If I had to do a clean comparison between the food at Little Bangkok and Bangkok Town, I’d begin by comparing the Pad Thai at both places. They both have a decent enough version, nothing spectacularly memorable but nothing offensive either. A curry comparison is probably warranted too, as it the Thai green papaya salad and Tom Yum Soup. Tell me what you think if you get to doing all the grub groundwork before I do.

The prices are almost the same at both restaurants, one being slightly higher than the other on certain dishes and vice versa so that it all evens out by the end. Little Bangkok might have a slight edge in that their portion sizes are often larger. Service at both is also comparable, except that (a) you can hog more server attention at Bangkok Town in Abu Hail because the restaurant tends to be quite empty, and (b) chainy Little Bangkok’s servers have a better handle on English, though the menus at both restaurants are self-explanatory.

Some of you are probably Lemongrass or Smiling BKK loyalists, or both – but it doesn’t hurt to switch up your Thai routine and try a different take. And with most Thai restaurants being located in mall food courts or high-end hotels, I’d say the market for mid-priced Thai is far from saturated.

The weeks ahead will help me build the list of hits and misses for Bangkok Town, but in the meantime, here’s my evolving list for Little Bangkok. Don’t let it bog you down, there’s enough variety for you to craft your own feasting exploration at both places. After all, you never know until you Thai.

If You Have Space Left on Your TablePad Thai; minced chicken in a spicy Tomyum broth (Guay Tiew Tomyum); Nam Kang Sai Ice-cream with boiled kidney beans, sweet corn and some sort of cake, all drizzled over with a sweet rosy red syrup.

Little Bangkok Oud Metha, right by the first traffic light after the Al Nasr Roundabout on your way to Lamcy Plaza. Other branches in Marina and JLT.Website: http://www.littlebangkok.com/ Phone: 04-4409302, extension 462

Bangkok Town On the same road as the Canadian Specialist Hospital, Abu Hail. They also have a branch in Sharjah. Phone: 04-2397242